It seemed inevitable that 95% (some very high %) of StackOverflow was destined to be little more than an archive, leaving a very stagnant system as the speed of activity & build out slowed to a crawl.
Large, highly active development technology doesn't change every day. PHP has been around for 15 plus years, Python for 20 years. And those are two of most popular.
How many questions can ultimately be asked about PHP or Python, before you wipe out the radical majority of possible and important questions? Obviously languages like that evolve, but not very quickly once they hit a certain point in their life cycle.
As you saturate the big segments, you're going to naturally bleed off user excitement and interest. Stack will continue on, getting tons of traffic because their answers will remain extraordinarily valuable, but the ratio for the amount of new content in relation to existing content will continue to accelerate toward Stack being mostly an answers archive. That guarantees the stagnation of their community (perhaps leaving small pockets of excitement around new, lesser adopted tools).
Haven't communities like Wikipedia followed curves like this? Once you max out all the English topics (for example), then it's an update approach with a smaller number of new topics coming in. Net result ultimately being a lot less overall new content being added in relation to the existing base (demanding a peak in overall community activity). Wikipedia isn't nearly as exciting as it once was, several years ago, when the rate of build-out and topic addition was staggering. The wild west eventually becomes a boring suburb.
I develop in .Net, WPF, and Javascript, and StackOverflow is a gem for these technologies. Not to mention there is a new version of .Net and WPF coming out every 2-3 years, and JavaScript is constantly evolving in form of frameworks and new browser versions (each with different support and intricacies). I don't see your argument as valid in my universe, and I also doubt that PHP and Python are most active technologies on SO.
"That guarantees the stagnation of their community"
Not from my perspective. I'm a Rails developer, and between our continuously evolving platform, the proliferation of gems, and my changing projects, I've always got new questions.
Meanwhile, new technologies keep appearing to become the New Hotness.
Here's why it guarantees overall stagnation (not necessarily on a specific topic):
Let's say you have 10 super segments, eg: PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Javascript, etc.
Once you build those out to a high degree, reasonably the amount of new content possible in relation to existing content, will plunge. Then if you add a new language that becomes popular and mass adopted, the best you can hope for is perhaps an addition of 5% to 10% to your content base. It all becomes modestly incremental, and the excitement overall is guaranteed to fall in that environment.
Ruby can be hopping as a subset, but the likelihood the whole thing will be is vastly reduced once the overall build-out slows. What's left to be excited about in the PHP section, once you've answered 97% of what is important about the language? How many ways can someone ask about error reporting?
I don't see anything in this that bodes badly for Stackoverflow, financially or as a community.
If all the PHP questions are answered, every PHP programmer is now able to Google and find what they want to SO. That means they 1) learn that SO is the place for answers and 2) see ads.
2 years from now, when they're working in another language with less established Q&A, they'll know where to go.
"Excitement overall" really doesn't mean anything here. I don't care how much or little activity there currently is in the Objective C section because I don't use Objective C. I'm able to find the info I want and get questions answered if they're not already there. That's all that matters.
I don't see anything in it that bodes badly for Stack in terms of traffic or financially either. I never said otherwise. They're dominant and given their answer base and the value of the content, they're likely to remain so.
I believe overall stagnation in the community is guaranteed however, which is what the topic rather focuses on.
Maybe we just aren't talking about the same thing. What does "stagnation in the community" mean to you?
If it means "overall, people lose interest and stop visiting to ask and answer questions," I don't see that. I'm not visiting to fill in all the gaps in SO's content, and feeling disappointed when there aren't many gaps to fill. I'm running into questions, Googling, and hoping to find my question already answered.
If I find it and it's not answered, I'll do research and try to answer it myself. If it doesn't exist, I'll ask. If I find the answer before anyone else does, I may answer it myself.
I'm not going to stop doing that, and I don't see why anyone else will, either. What the overall trends are in the site really has no bearing on my individual participation, so it never feels "stagnant" to me.
Maybe you're imagining users who show up and surf for questions to answer, and those people are getting bored? That's just not the way I use the site, though.
Large, highly active development technology doesn't change every day. PHP has been around for 15 plus years, Python for 20 years. And those are two of most popular.
How many questions can ultimately be asked about PHP or Python, before you wipe out the radical majority of possible and important questions? Obviously languages like that evolve, but not very quickly once they hit a certain point in their life cycle.
As you saturate the big segments, you're going to naturally bleed off user excitement and interest. Stack will continue on, getting tons of traffic because their answers will remain extraordinarily valuable, but the ratio for the amount of new content in relation to existing content will continue to accelerate toward Stack being mostly an answers archive. That guarantees the stagnation of their community (perhaps leaving small pockets of excitement around new, lesser adopted tools).
Haven't communities like Wikipedia followed curves like this? Once you max out all the English topics (for example), then it's an update approach with a smaller number of new topics coming in. Net result ultimately being a lot less overall new content being added in relation to the existing base (demanding a peak in overall community activity). Wikipedia isn't nearly as exciting as it once was, several years ago, when the rate of build-out and topic addition was staggering. The wild west eventually becomes a boring suburb.